Michael Sheen and Oscar nominee Frank Langella are on remarkable form as the title roles in this electrifying drama based on the groundbreaking interview David Frost secured with disgraced President Nixon. The main body of the film is an intellectual duel, and there is no shortage of intelligence testing interview techniques and long, tension filled…
Mansfield Park as told by Patricia Rozema is a little different to Mansfield Park as told by Jane Austen. In this colourful film, we are introduced to a version of Jane Austen’s gentle novel that contains a family involved in the slave industry (something that is clear, rather than implied), detailed illustrations of rape and…
Meet Roger Brown. Roger is a highly successful recruiter, or headhunter, and it is fair to say that he’s a bit of a scoundrel. He takes great pleasure belittling and undermining those at work whilst operating outside of his legal profession as an efficient art thief. He uses this money to pay for his extravagant…
Steamy, weird and gorgeously shot, this is an admirable attempt to bring Matthew Lewis’s classic 18th century gothic novel to the big screen. It’s a shame so few people in the UK saw it in cinemas, as there is much to enjoy here from a cinematic point of view. Director Dominic Moll stages everything so…
Let’s get this straight: Lockout is Escape From New York in space, minus almost everything that made that film a classic. Snow (Guy Pearce) is framed for the murder of an undercover agent (YAWN) and is due to be sent to orbital space-prison and floating disaster waiting to happen ‘MS One’. Meanwhile, the President’s daughter…
To appreciate the light, one has to sample the dark, and unfortunately for me this means watching films as terrible as Amusement. It’s boring rubbish and pointlessly horrid. Unsurprisingly it did not get a cinema release in the United Kingdom. The story is split into a series of segments which follow the traumas of a…
This disastrous romantic comedy is loosely inspired by the far superior German film Run Lola Run. The practically non-existent story involves a woman named Lola (Ashleigh Sumner, who some may recognise from TV series The Event) running through San Francisco, desperate to make it to an important meeting. We are lead to believe that her…
The sophomore effort from writer-director Jeff Nichols, Take Shelter concerns blue-collar father Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), happily married to Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and proud parent of a deaf daughter. When Curtis starts having apocalyptic visions of a biblical thunderstorm, and of his loved ones turning on him, it begins to tear his family apart. For…
This bleak and interesting drama about a worldwide flu-like pandemic is a recent offering from the prolific Steven Soderbergh. I haven’t liked much of his past work – the Ocean’s films had a smug obnoxiousness about them – but this is something quite different. The best thing about Contagion is that it tries to systematically show, from different viewpoints,…
I realise I’m quite late in adding my views of The Artist to the chorus of support that has already embraced it. As you will probably have heard already (or witnessed yourself, if you have seen the film), it is a wonderful picture, a film that has the power to speak to anyone and everyone. And it’s…
The original was a masterpiece, and a bloody tough act to follow, but this really sickeningly terrifying horror sequel is almost as good. When a man is murdered whilst taking part in a radio phone-in, Police officer Dennis Hopper convinces DJ and journalist Caroline Williams to use it as bait to catch the perpetrators. But…
George Clooney‘s previous directorial efforts have been erratic in quality. Good Night, and Good Luck won him critical plaudits whilst the more recent Leatherheads proved to be a mis-step on his resumé, disappointing audiences with its confusing pace and uneasy use of the screwball genre. Thankfully, The Ides of March is more akin to the former and is…
It’s pretty safe to say that what little knowledge us Brits have regarding major American sports like baseball, basketball, ice hockey and American football tend to stem from cinema. These titanic past times that comprise a lofty part of US culture and identity just don’t get the coverage they arguably deserve over this side of…
The term ‘Black comedy’ probably won’t find a greater fit than this; a comedy about cancer. However, the cast and screenwriter Will Reiser – who injects his own personal experience with the disease into the film – manage to make the film funny, insightful as well as touching, without ever stepping into disrespectful territory. The numerical…